Measurement Invariance of the Passion Scale Across Three Samples: An ESEM Approach

Sport and exercise psychology researchers rely on the Passion Scale to assess levels of harmonious and obsessive passion for many different types of activities (Vallerand, 2010). However, this practice assumes that items from the Passion Scale are interpreted with the same meaning across all activity types. Using exploratory structural equation modeling (ESEM), we tested this assumption by examining the invariance of scores from the Passion Scale across groups of recreational athletes/exercisers (N = 562), competitive athletes (N = 438), and sports fans (N = 256). We found that the ESEM analysis fit the data better than the more common independent clusters confirmatory factor analysis (ICM-CFA) approach and yielded lower correlations between harmonious and obsessive passion factors. Using ESEM, we found evidence of configural, weak, and partial strong invariance across the three groups. Evidence of partial strong invariance provides tentative support for comparing levels of harmonious and obsessive passion across activities.